Clarissa Dickson Wright's Clarissa and the Countryman co-star, Sir John Scott,
pays tribute to the presenter who risked her BBC career to fight for the
rights of country folk

Clarissa Dickson Wright found fame as a cook in Two Fat Ladies but later became a champion of the countryside including – controversially – opposing the hunting ban.

She made Clarissa and the Countryman, a BBC Two series in which she travelled the British Isles with her friend, Sir John Scott, dispensing politically incorrect bons mots.

In 2002, the BBC governors found the programme guilty of pro-hunt bias, upholding a complaint by the League of Cruel Sports. Dickson Wright believed the BBC dropped her as a result of the controversy.

Here Sir John – known to viewers as Johnny – pays tribute to his friend:

"We won't see Clarissa's like again. She was immensely courageous. When the Labour Party announced they were going to bring forward the ban on fox-hunting, she'd had no previous experience of field sports but thought it a thoroughly spiteful bill that would create an ethnic minority where none had previously existed.

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"She jeopardised her television career to become involved in a whole series of programmes which were colossally controversial and brought odium on both our heads. But the whole thing was a hoot from one end to the other. It was a series about country sports – shooting, fishing, riding a horse out hunting – which she had never done before. But she did them without batting an eyelid.

"I remember when we had made a first series where Clarissa had been shown following hounds on a quad bike. I desperately wanted to make another series and we were having a discussion with the producers when I put forward the idea of doing it again, and they said, 'Oh, we've already had you on a horse and Clarissa on a quad bike'. And Clarissa said, 'Well, I'll ride a horse'. And there was this expression on the BBC-ites faces which they always had when anything to do with Clarissa involved in physical activity came up – they were squealing with delight at the idea of Clarissa being hoisted on to a horse.

"Someone of her weight and shape being on a horse – I did have my worries. I said, 'For God's sake, Clarissa, what are we going to do when they discover you can't ride?' And she said, 'Oh, we'll think of something on the day.' Every day was like that – hugely entertaining. The BBC had no intention of making a programme that was sympathetic to field sports. That was the last thing they wanted. But through the force of Clarissa's character, those programmes were made. She knew it would pretty much kill off her career, and it pretty much did. The programmes were tremendously controversial. I believe Mrs Blair was furious. And that was that.

"I will remember Clarissa as someone who just had this tremendous zest for life. She was an incredibly good cook and a very good hostess. Whatever was good seasonally, she went to tremendous lengths to get hold of it. And she would extract the best out of people. She had this great belief that nobody was boring, and there was something interesting in everyone. She was a very loyal, generous friend and she had the ability to really encourage people to extend themselves. She would find a talent in people that they didn't know they had and encourage them to develop it.

"She was colossal fun and no situation was ever allowed to become tedious. She always found something to make it amusing. And one thing I learned from her was that you didn't have to get p----ed to have a good time."